Method of manufacturing an individually shaped hearing device or hearing aid

Abstract

The present invention provides a method of providing input parameters for the fitting process of individually shaped or customized hearing devices by storing geometry data during the manufacturing process into data storage and selectively reading out data from this data storage during the manufacturing and / or fitting process of the hearing device. To improve the quality and to reduce the time required for the fitting process, all the data available from the manufacturing process, e.g. the geometry data, may be used during the final fitting process at the dispenser's office.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] This invention relates to a method of providing input parameters for the fitting process of individually shaped or customized hearing devices. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] For a rapid manufacturing and final fitting of hearing devices, such as individually customized behind the ear or in-the-ear hearing aids, the process usually starts with taking an impression of the shape of the ear. The shape of this impression will than have to be digitized for instance by means of a scanning device. The first step must actually be performed with the user of the hearing device present at the location of the dispenser, whilst the following steps may be done either at the location of the dispenser or at the hearing device manufacturing center. With the digitized data of the outer shape of the hearing device, the shell of this hearing device may be typically manufactured by means of dedicated shell modeling software at the hearing device manufacturing c...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0007] To improve the quality and to reduce the time required for the fitting process, all the data available from the manufacturing process, e.g. the geometry data, should be used during the final fitting process at the dispenser's office. To have all such data available during the fitting process, the dispenser will advantageously have access to those data as they are stored in the data storage.

[0009] In another embodiment, the connection will be established via the Internet. The accessibility of the data in the data storage via an Internet connection allows a quick and simple transfer of those data without the need of specialized connection means only for the purpose of manufacturing the hearing device. By using secure services and / or encryption the privacy of the data may be ensured.

[0017] With such data available to the dispenser performing the fitting process, it is possible to obtain a simplified model to achieve a good approximation of the acoustic properties of the customized hearing device and to start the fitting process with nearly optimal parameters which only need minor modification during the final fitting process.

Problems solved by technology

Although such a manufacturing process saves a reasonable amount of time for manufacturing individually shaped or customized hearing devices, the final process of fitting this device to the individual needs of the user is still time consuming and mostly based on empirically defined starting points or parameters and often leads to a lengthy series of trial and error steps until reaching the final result.

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